This invention relates to the testing and certification of certain pressure vessels in conformance with existing federal and state regulations, where the pressurization of the vessels prior to use will allow the vessels to be certified for refilling and reuse.
There exists specialized procedures for certifying certain pressurized vessels, such as 49 CFR 178.33 in the United States. That provision, which is a Federal regulation for single use containers, provides for “one out of each lot of 25,000 containers or less, successively produced per day shall be pressure tested to destruction and must not burst below 240 psig gauge pressure.” However, there is no such provision for the refilling of multi-use, pressurized consumer product containers that can be refilled by a consumer using a refill kiosk. The applicant of the present invention believes that to better serve its clients and to further its goals of minimizing packaging waste and promoting refillable packaging, multi-use containers need to be introduced into the stream of commerce and must be certified in a different manner than single use containers. The present invention provides a method by which multi-use containers may be certified so that a confidence can be attached to the container that is at least a level of confidence as that of the single use container in view of the heightened loads and stresses that are present on a multi-use container.